1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an information process field, and more particularly, to a method and system for finding a source failure node in a traceable network.
2. Description of Related Art
In a network in which information or material flows in one direction, the information or material can be traced with a traceable network. For example, a traceable network for information flow can be constructed with technologies such as electronic signatures, electronic seals, etc; and a traceable network for material flow can be constructed with technology such as RFID's. The information and material can be collectively referred to as “product.” An ideal traceable network records every stage experienced from the creation of the product to the consumption of the product, and every stage corresponds to one node of the traceable network, in which a stage or node adjacent to the product consumption is referred to as downstream, and a stage or node away from the product consumption is referred to as an upstream stage or upstream node. FIG. 1 (A) is a simple traceable network, which includes only one creation stage and two transfer stages. For a product that includes a plurality of components, its corresponding traceable network may include many nodes, because not only will the product at least experience creation and transfer stages, but the respective components contained in the product will also experience creation and transfer stages, and these components can be constructed by smaller components. FIG. 1 (B) is an example of a traceable network of a product that includes a plurality of components.
The traceable networks corresponding to different products may overlap with each other, for example, there can be various products including a certain component, or a certain stage that will affect a plurality of components. As such, a combination of traceable networks of various products becomes a more complex traceable network. FIG. 1 (C) shows such a combined traceable network in which the more right a node is, the more downstream a node it is. As shown in FIG. 1 (C), an upstream node may affect a plurality of downstream nodes.
If some stage in the traceable network has an exception, for example, a quality problem is found in the material network or data is found to be corrupted in the information network, an obvious idea is that all downstream nodes of the stage having the exception will be affected by that exception. The problem is that it generally cannot be determined whether the exception is caused by a failure of that stage itself or caused by a failure of the upstream nodes of that stage. In the latter case, all downstream nodes of that upstream stage will be affected. If an exception occurs at product consumption, that is, an exception occurs at a most downstream stage of the traceable network or at a leaf node of the traceable network, then it will be more difficult to determine the affected range of that exception. Thus, it is necessary to find the source failure node according to information provided in the traceable network. The source failure node refers to such a failure point that all of its upstream nodes do not have the failure, but all of its downstream nodes do. The scope affected by that failure can be determined once the source failure node is found, thereby taking further processing.